


How Prof. Shaw's Grammar Nazi Ways Got Me Laid and Helped Me Find True Love

by jasminetea



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - Academia, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Casual Sex, College, First Time, Happy Ending, Internet, Loss of Virginity, M/M, One Night Stands, Smoking, Snapshots, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasminetea/pseuds/jasminetea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is a professor.  Erik is a student.  They meet through Craigslist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Prof. Shaw's Grammar Nazi Ways Got Me Laid and Helped Me Find True Love

**Author's Note:**

> who prompted it.

Erik rereads the ad and thinks the guy is a jerk. One large, obscenely pretentious one. He can't believe he's halfway through typing a reply. At least, the guy’s willing to host.  
  
He minimizes to his desktop and brings up a scan of his college ID card. He looks young in it. Moody, he’s been told. His youth might be a turn-off for some people, but it does attract its own sort of crowd. Like this jerk. He crops the scan down to just the square photo of his face.  
  
 _Why the fuck not_ , he thinks, and attaches it to the email. He glances over the email one last time, double-checking the spelling and grammar. At the very least, even if he gets turned down, he knows it won’t be because of his spelling and grammar. Professor Shaw had been exceedingly anal about that for an assistant lab professor, but if it gets him laid, hey. _And_ he’ll be able to say, “Professor Shaw’s lab book corrections got me laid” and laugh at his face.  
  
He hits send and goes back to Wikipedia-ing the ins-and-outs of financial aid.  
  
  
  
“You did say twice,” Charles reminds him.  
  
Erik looks up at him dazedly. “Your refractory period?” Charles continues with a quirk of his brow.  
  
“Oh,” Erik says. “Right. I need a few though.” They lapse into silence, and Charles remembers that being anyone’s first is awkward in its beauty.  
  
Charles slides off the cotton bedsheets, smoothing his trousers as he stands. Erik’s face is still a mix of post-coital haze and the beginnings of confusion. “Come on.” A gesture of the hand. “You can smoke right?”  
  
Erik nods. He follows Charles to the living room, his students’ papers still spread across the coffee table.  
  
Charles rummages through his coat pocket and hands the pack to Erik.  
  
“You’re giving me an herbal blend?” Erik still manages to look indignant, even while sitting on Charles’ couch naked.  
  
Charles gives him a look. “Smoking’s not healthy you know.”  
  
“Just give me a pack. Please. If it’s all the same to you.” Charles sighs and opens a drawer to find a half-used pack of Camels and a red gas station lighter. He hands both to Erik, and turns his chair to face Erik.  
  
Erik taps out a cigarette with ease, and brings it to his lips. It’s the lighter he doesn’t know how to use. It’s terribly awkward to watch the poor boy fumble with trying to click it, so Charles leans forward, takes it out of his hands.  
  
Erik looks helplessly at him, a faint blush across his cheeks. Charles thinks the freckles there will fade soon enough. Charles lights the cigarette for him and leans back into his chair with a creak. He watches Erik take that first inhale and exhale, sees he doesn’t cough or screw his face up at the flavor, and then goes to the kitchen.  
  
Charles returns with a coffee cup. Erik glances at it and dryly remarks, “You need caffeine and you’re worried about my _refractory period_?”  
  
Charles corrects him. “It’s wine. You’re underage.”  
  
Erik rolls his eyes and blows out another puff of smoke through pursed lips.  
  
“So how’s school?”  
  
Erik looks at him in utter disbelief. “It’s fine. I took a term off, I go back next spring.”  
  
Charles leaves it at that and sips his wine. Erik continues to finger his cigarette.  
  
Charles' thoughts wander. He tries to piece together what Erik’s history must be. Nineteen, a virgin, took a term off, at turns both shy and arrogant. Clearly knows how to smoke, but doesn’t know how to use a lighter. He wonders what else he can find out before Erik leaves in the morning.  
  
“I think I can get it up again.”  
  
“You _think_?”  
  
“Talking about college doesn’t make me hard.” Erik puts out his cigarette on the ashtray next to him.  
  
“And what does?”  
  
“I don’t know. I’m the virgin remember?” Erik lowers his eyes with a smirk, and Charles finds this frustrating in the best kind of way. “Why don’t you show me?”  
  
Charles sighs indulgently. “You terrible thing, making an old man like me do all the work.” He pushes his chair back and sinks to his knees in front of Erik.  
  
He takes Erik into his mouth, and smiles at Erik’s cry of pleasured surprise.  
  
  
  
On the one hand, Charles isn’t pleased about teaching the Intro class.  It means lots of time taken out of his day to nurture, teach, and mentor new, eager minds.  But that’s also why he likes it.  He loves it when students realize learning can be engaging, exciting, and fun.  Even better when he convinces students biology isn’t that bad, and that they should take his genetics course.  He also loves the students who say they hate biology, but like the class because of him.  
  
Teaching is its own reward in the end.  
  
This year’s Intro class is as large as its ever been, and still the university insists on putting him in one of the smaller lecture halls.  
  
He’s half an hour into the lecture, beginning to explain why it is all of them should be passionate about biology when he sees a familiar face in the front row.  
  
Short ginger hair, long enough to yank by the fistful.  Slim, will probably become wiry as he grows older.  He’s sitting attentively typing his notes into a laptop stamped with HP and a sticker that says FREE PALESTINE.  
  
Charles doesn’t often stumble in his lectures, but he does now.  He stops mid-sentence and stares at the kid.  He should’ve known.  That atrocious mauve background to the kid’s photo was the same atrocious shade the university insisted all their students take their photos in front of.  
  
Before it can become anymore embarrassing, and the class starts looking at each other wondering why the professor is staring at Erik Lehnsherr, Erik looks up from this laptop and nods at him.  
  
Charles picks himself up and continues his lecture.  
  
For the rest of the class, Erik is a model student, taking his notes and keeping to himself.  When class ends, he slowly packs away his laptop.  
  
Charles knows he’s going to have to talk to him when Erik waits for the last of the students to leave.    
  
Erik stands, shoulders his backpack, and walks up to Charles.  
  
“Do I need to drop the class?”  
  
Charles could say a lot of things.  He could say it’s inappropriate, it’s unprofessional, it’s unethical.  Instead, he says, “Why would you need to?”  
  
Something in Erik changes.  He stands up straighter, looks more confident.  Charles realizes his prior calmness merely masked his nervousness.  Now, Erik looks positively devilish as he reaches into his backpack and pulls out a new pack of Camel cigarettes.  
  
“Want one?” he offers.  
  
Charles is speechless.  “Smoking’s bad for you.”  
  
Erik smiles.  “Yeah, whatever.”  
  
“I’m trying to quit you know.”  
  
“Oh.  That’s why you had that herbal shi— I mean, herbal blend.”  
  
“I know it tastes like shit, but the other brand doesn’t help at all.”  
  
“Ok, then come outside and smoke your herbal blend while I smoke the good stuff.”  
  
They walk out the hall and sit together on the stone benches that was the Class of ‘81's gift.  Erik draws a matchbook from his coat.  
  
“Is _that_ why you don’t know how to use a lighter?”  Charles asks incredulously.  
  
“I don’t like lighters,” Erik mutters.  He lights both their cigarettes.  
  
Erik doesn’t waste time.  He gets to the point quickly.  “So.  Can we have sex again?  It was good.”  
  
“ _Erik_ , you do know people can hear us right?”  
  
“It’s a large university, no one gives a fuck.”  
  
Charles puts out his cigarette.  He sighs.  “You were a virgin, Erik.  For all you know I’m the worse lay this side of the Mississippi.”  
  
“I was a virgin, not an idiot,” is Erik’s dry reply.  “I know what good is.  So, sex.  Again?”  
  
Charles relents and puts his hand over Erik’s, letting his fingers slot into the empty spaces between Erik’s.  “How about I take you to dinner first?”  
  
Erik looks surprised.  “Ok.”  
  
  
  
Charles rubs his thumb against Erik’s freckled cheek.  
  
“We need to talk about the fact I’m your student,” Erik states.  
  
“We do,” Charles agrees.    
  
Erik leans into his cheek.  
  
Charles enjoys the moment, and then asks, “Can I kiss you?”  
  
“Why are you asking?  We already had sex.”  
  
“It’s the right thing to do, that’s why.”  
  
Erik looks suckerpunched.  He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and rocks forward onto his toes.  “No one does the right thing anymore.”  
  
“I try to,” Charles says.  “I like to be a good man.  Can I?”  
  
Erik nods.  
  
“Out loud, please, Erik.”  
  
“Yes, Charles.  Please kiss me.”  Erik looks so charmingly exasperated and youthfully defiant, his breath frost in the air and his cheeks flushed from the cold, and his eyes so very bright.  
  
Charles leans down.  
  
Erik wraps his arm around Charles’ waist, and tilts his face up to receive his kiss.


End file.
